'Peaky Blinders spiritual successor' Dope Girls has style to spare – but will be extremely divisive

Executive producer Jane Tranter gave a measured response. "You make a piece which is as inclusive as possible in how you make it, and you want your audience to be as inclusive as possible," she said. "So we didn't make it thinking, 'Well, they're not going to like it, but it will be for them.'"

Personally, I think this seems unlikely. I can't believe anyone could have made Dope Girls without recognising it's a very specific piece of television, one which will put off as many people as it delights.

For this is no Peaky Blinders. It's an altogether different beast, one which seems designed to provoke responses and push the envelope on what period drama, and specifically period crime drama, could and should look like.

The six-part series stars Julianne Nicholson as Kate Galloway, a woman who, at the end of the First World War, finds her life crumbling down around her.

In order to protect her daughter Evie (Eilidh Fisher), she joins forces with bohemian dancer Billie Cassidy (Umi Myers) and sets up a nightclub in 1918 Soho.

As she embraces her new criminal lifestyle, Kate finds herself the target of not only some unsavoury figures, but also the police. This includes Violet Davies (Eliza Scanlen), a troubled individual and one of the first wave of female officers.

The first thing you notice about the series is its style. This is a unique looking, sounding and feeling drama, with bold costuming and production design throughout.

The score from experimental vocalists and electronic artists NYX is top notch, giving the drama a sense of urgency, excitement and punchiness, while the series also plays around with creative captioning and on-screen graphics.

All of this - the graphics, the anachronistic sound work, the bold costuming - has been done before, none of it is completely new. But is far less common in period drama. Peaky Blinders' boldest fashion statement was to revitalise the flatcap.

Director Shannon Murphy, who is best known for her work on Babyteeth and episodes of Killing Eve, said at the Q&A for the series that she calls the genre "period-shmeriod", adding that she didn't want to "have arguments about door handles or whether someone would wear tights or not at the time", but instead that "if it looks great, we're doing it".

The team noted the difference between authenticity and truth, saying that while they were never that interested in working towards the former, they hoped to get to the "truth" of what it was like to exist as a woman during that time.

Naturally, this philosophy also impacts the substance of the piece.

The version of 1918 London that the series portrays is likely not one that you have seen before.

That's not to mean that parts of it didn't exist. In fact, based on their research, writer Alex Warren said that he and his co-writer Polly Stenham found that real life at the time was "more extreme" than anything they present on screen, making our own world now seem "boring and tame".

But the series is very clear up front that it is only "inspired" by the time period, with the events being fictional modern, and there can be no doubt that this is a very modern, socially progressive take on history.

The show is ostensibly focused on the social revolution of the time, and the ways in which women broke free from patriarchy and societal constraints. This is a concept ripe with dramatic tension, yet is strangely diluted by the show's own insistence that almost everyone was a part of it.

We don't really get much of a sense of the world outside Soho, outside of this specific cohort of women and men behaving badly. During street parties, the women aren't getting reprimanded for their daring attire or even glanced at. It seems as though the creatives have prioritised the hedonism of the time over portraying how revolutionary this was.

When it comes to the show's presentation of patriarchy, it's true that a lot of the men in this are utterly awful. But the series is seemingly less interested in anything more nuanced, the ways in which social attitudes percolate under the surface.

Instead, we get violently abusive police officers screaming vulgar abuse at the new female officers, and nightclub owners threatening to cut people's body parts off.

The problem is that the sense of progress is dulled because everything is turned up to 11. Perhaps the best example of this is Kate.

The production team have made much of Kate's transformation across the first episode. In truth, while a lot of terrible things happen to her, and she is forced to make choices you'd imagine she otherwise wouldn't, I found it hard to reconcile what's on screen with the idea of some grand transformation.

To my view, Kate was never the "country mouse" that has been pitched. She was forthright and daring from the start, with a clear agency, and seemingly little truck for social convention.

In that way, her transformation is far more like Walter White's in Breaking Bad (which was always over-emphasised, he had a darkness from the off), than Better Call Saul, where he takes a very gradual, reluctant turn.

However, in Breaking Bad Walt still had to act the family man at home, at least at first - he was living two lives. Here, Kate is bringing her family, now just down to her daughter Evie, along for the ride, so that tension is almost entirely gone.

From the first episodes, Kate spends no time attempting to coddle Evie or instil in her the social values of the time around modesty, deference and strict 'morality'.

It ends up feeling at times like an alternate history, something more akin to The Handmaid's Tale than a traditional period drama.

That's fine, and the show is bold to eschew genre constraints. When it comes down to it, most TV fans wouldn't want to watch the same programme rehashed again and again.

But it's hardly a secret that many viewers, particularly period drama fans, can be sticklers for authenticity, and a representation of history that they recognise.

You may sense that my own personal thoughts and feelings regarding the show are somewhat muddled after watching three of the six episodes, and that's because they are.

I admire its audacity and its attempt to interrogate history from a different angle, and I think it looks and sounds great. But I also think its ambitions at times outweigh its execution, its style gets in the way of its substance, and its progressive social message is undermined by its lack of contrast.

However, perhaps more strongly than anything, I can sense how this will be received by the public at large. I can already imagine that some will find in this their new favourite, offbeat show, while others will be outraged by its transgressive tone and modern slant on historical storytelling.

It's notable that the show is scheduled to air on Saturday nights. Peaky Blinders started life on Thursdays, while its final two seasons aired their episodes on Sundays, which have become the BBC's home for most big dramas.

Saturdays are more frequently home to fantasy and sci-fi aimed at a younger audience, such as Doctor Who and, a long time ago, Merlin.

Dope Girls is very much not a family show. There is a lot of gore and violence on display, as well as plenty of sex scenes.

In some ways, it has the temperament of a BBC Three show, aiming towards more of a young adult audience, but with the budget, sheen and star power of a BBC One vehicle.

Speaking of the stars, one thing which really can't be diminished is the strength of the performances on display. Nicholson, Myers and Fisher are all engaging in their roles, while Geraldine James's Isabella Salucci and Dustin Demri-Burns's Damaso make for compelling, if slightly one-dimensional, villains.

Eliza Scanlen is the real standout, though, and while the promise of a "redemption story" from Scalen herself threatens to make her character less interesting, Violet is thus far a deeply complex lead, and by far the most interesting of the central figures to follow.

This helps us arrive at the central point. Having only been able to see three episodes, if difficult for me to arrive at a conclusion as to how successful the series is as a whole.

What I do know is that the first episodes certainly makes a bold entrance, and one which will not be welcomed by all viewers. I feel sure it will find its audience, however narrow or broad that may be - I'm just not entirely sure whether it will include me yet.

Dope Girls will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 9:15pm on Saturday 22nd February 2025.

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